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Thursday, 7 January 2016

The BIG 2015 Round Up Post!!!

It's that time of year again where I spend a million hours writing a round up of the previous year, swearing at blogger as it moves my photos around at will (blogger, let's be friends, k?) and generally being astounded at how much we've fit in to 365 days. For us 2015 was a BIGGIE so I'll (try to) keep the words short....let's go!

We started off the year by casually buying a house. Ok, so there was nothing casual about it. It was more like "OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING WE'RE CHILDREN WE CAN'T DO THIS BUT ALL OUR WILDEST DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE" kinda thing. It had been a bit of a bonkers stressful festive season 2014 whilst viewing houses, having meetings with our broker etc but at the beginning of 2015 we had found our house and were just waiting for the paperwork to go through and to get the keys. We should probably mention too that we were leaving our beloved Brighton (where only millionaires can afford houses these days) and were hopping along the coast to Worthing which is up and coming and basically just wonderful. We were also swapping a teeny tiny one bed flat for a pretty spacious 3 bed house with a garden. For two people who work from home it was a no brainer.

In February I turned 30! I didn't feel any maturer. Lots of celebrating was done, with a night out with the Brighton crew plus Jam took me to London where we stayed by Camden Lock, went to the zoo (I posed with both real and non-real animals) and had a fancy meal in a vegan restaurant in Primrose Hill.

George's fan club on Instagram had decided that 28th of Feb was Day of George! Loads of people posted up photos of themselves wearing their George's using the hashtag - we hope they do the same this year as it was a lot of fun!

Mollie Makes featured us on their "Introducing..." page....we hadn't realised it was going to be such a huge pic!!!

We started #helloDODOdoodles on Instagram just for fun....this is one of my faves! You guys seemed to like these so we promise we'll be revisiting the idea soon...

Not long after moving in to the house I finally did what I'd been planning to do since we first even began thinking about hello DODO 6 years ago....I quit my day job! For the first few months I was utterly terrified, we'd just bought a house and were paying all sorts of tradesmen and on the day to day I often wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Luckily all sorts of fun projects started coming our way and DODO went from strength to strength! I still occasionally have a bit of a freak out but I'm gradually getting used to being a full time DODO!

Talk about getting busy....first up was being part of Pick Me Up Graphic Arts Festival at Somerset House with BEST! I've said it over and over but Pick Me Up is one of the reasons we ever started hello DODO so being involved was a total dream come true.

After our initial meetings to come up with ideas two years previously (whoops) we finally created a Supermarket Sarah wall with designosaur! We created some really fun collab pieces too, included the ombre dinosaurs, Billy the Bat and designosaur made our Totem Pole in to a necklace! They also made super cool dino lights. You can shop the wall here.

Another exciting project! We were invited to be a part of a special Lucky Dip Club X Folksy box along with a whole bunch of other awesome makers. The theme was Summer and we created this cute limited edition Octopus screen print.

In June we took part in the first ever Ashdown Road Artists Open House - the house of our friends Paulie and Anna (of Anna's Drawing Room fame) which was part of Worthing Art Trail. It was a wonderful mix of diverse work in the house and we got to meet awesome creative couple Ellie and John Bond and Jam taught loads of kids how to make badges. We look forward to being a part of the house again this year!

The 2015 Brighton Etsy Craft Party was even bigger and more wonderful than ever! There were LOADS of awesome workshops going on (we gave a gocco printing one - see above!) and once again we dipped in to our never ending DODO wedding stash of amazing balloons...

We went to the first ever Wildlife Festival at Shoreham Airport with the designosaur funsters! It was amazing!

We won the Mollie Makes Collaboration Award with designosaur for George!!! Here we are collecting our award from the lovely MM editor Lara! It was a wonderful day of photo walks, talks, meeting other nominees and then the scary bit...pitching to a whole massive table of super judges! It was an amazing wonderful shock to win!

More good stuff! We were featured TWICE on the Anorak Magazine "Good Stuff" pages - we seriously love Anorak so this was awesome!!

We were approached by We Built This City to have some of our work in their newly launching Carnaby Street store - which if you haven't visited yet is AMAZING. We went to the launch party and had loads of fun!

We designed the cover for the last ever Inside Magazine! It was summer and almost Pride so we created this fun rainbow windmill. They discontinued the mag to concentrate on their utterly amazing new one - Inside Artists - check it out!

Whenever possible we enjoyed our new home Worthing, mostly be hanging out on the super peaceful beach. We love it when the tide goes out!

Me and our friend Amy had our photo taken with the legend that is Disco Pete! If you're from Brighton you surely know who he is...

We had a BBQ. Toby from I Like Cats put cherry bakewells on it. No-one knows why.

To make our house look great we first had to make it look really terrible. The whole place needed a rewire, then we stripped all the revolting wallpaper from downstairs and had it replastered. We let the plasterer use the beige (slightly doggy smelling) carpets as a dust sheet so it forced us to rip them up and get the original boards lovingly reclaimed (they are now our pride and joy!) Don't worry it doesn't look like this now! At the mo we're painting - more progress pics soon!

We launched loads of new cards in 2015 - this one was ours (and yours it would seem) favourite!

We took part in the Etsy Blogger Sleepover at Lick Studios. Basically we set up little studio spaces at Lick and Etsy brought a bunch of well-known bloggers to come and see us working and to do some workshops. We gocco printed this fun version of our Brighton Up Your Day design. Check out this super cute vid Lick made at the event.

We weren't going to have a holiday (we had bought a house and I'd quit my job!) but with the festive season looming we couldn't cope with the idea of not taking a break so we whizzed off to Amsterdam for a fun-filled week of craft beer, galleries, LOTS of walking, zoo animals, and Miffy stalking. You can read two blogposts we wrote about Amsterdam here and here.

Along with fellow Pick Me Up exhibitor and awesome illustrator Carlos Garde-Martin, we hand picked a bunch of our fave eclectic fun-loving graphic artists and HIP! HIP! Collective was born! Currently our other three wonderful members are YUK FUN, Likks and Maria Cruz. We decided to go BIG with our first event...

...by launching at the London Illustration Fair at the OXO Tower Bargehouse! It was a really crazy fun whirlwind experience and we can't wait to do more with these cool kids in the near future! Follow us on instagram and twitter to keep up to date!

Just as the festive season kicked in we launched our colourful organic dinosaur babywear! They were really popular at markets, we're yet to see any adorable pics of babies wearing them though (PPLLEEAASSEEE) We have new designs coming your way soon so watch this space...

In November and December we were frequently told (by everyone) that we were utterly insane for how many events we were doing (a million) but we survived! We returned to Renegade for our 4th year and I think it might've been the most fun yet! We had an awesome posse of Brighton Etsy folks plus friends Keith, Sally (HOYFC) and Sold to hang out with! We also loved being part of BUST Craftacular, Fairy Tale Fair and of course Crafty Fox Market.

We also helped organise with the Brighton Etsy Team the biggest craziest prettiest craft fair Brighton has ever seen!

We were really excited to also be asked to exhibit in the Studio Loo Christmas Open House! If you haven't visited architect & eco designer Claire Potter's Studio Loo on Portland Road yet you must! It's a wonderful space which was converted from an old public toilet. Make sure you visit during May's AOH and see for yourself!

A wonderful project to finish off the year - we did the design work for Herringbone Art's 'A Winter's Trail' - a magical kids show at Brighton's Theatre Royal. We got to go and see the show which took you on a wonderful adventure through parts of the theatre you wouldn't usually explore and were told a completely magical story. Plus, we learnt the Fairy Detective Agency (FDA) secret handshake, which we still practice every now and then! Check out this blogpost about how we created the graphics. We hope to work with Herringbone Arts and Theatre Royal again in the near future!

So! That was our 2015! Kinda epic eh?! This isn't even everything! We've worked with some wonderful clients this year and gained some fantastic stockists. We can't wait to see what 2016 has in store for us!!! :o)

p.s. it took hours BUT you were very well behaved blogger! thank you!! Maybe I'll blog more...

I like this place. I was here the other night, I've been there for about four or five hours and found the prices reasonable on all fronts and the staff to be so friendly. I would be the perfect person to have on an infomercial for this event venue if they ever had one.